Do economic conditions still cause Crime? Some comforting empirical evidences from EU panel
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Date
2019Author
Butkus, Mindaugas
Matuzevičiūtė-Balčiūnienė, Kristina
Mačiulytė-Šniukienė, Alma
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Higher crime rates lead to the increasing fear and anxiety in society and disturb the social structure and harmony in the country. In the last decades, many scientists depict a decrease in economic factors, such as GDP per capita, unemployment rate, poverty, etc. as the primary drivers of crime both in developed and in developing countries. Even during the periods of economic crises, crime rates in the European Union (EU) continued to either decline or remain the same, thus bringing into question the impact of economic factors on crime rates in the EU. The paper examines the impact of changing economic conditions on crime rates in EU countries, employing nowadays vastly used methods in economics to address endogeneity. The aim of the paper is to empirically estimate the relationship between crime rates and economic factors, using previously developed methods. After a series of robustness checks, estimations did not provide evidence of a significant relationship between economic conditions and crime rates over the last decade in EU countries, except for homicides in some model specifications. Povećanje stope kriminala dovodi do povećanja osjećaja straha i tjeskobe u društvu i narušavanja društvenog poretka i sklada u zemlji. U posljednjim desetljećima mnogi znanstvenici opisuju pad gospodarskih čimbenika kao što su BDP po glavi stanovnika, stope nezaposlenosti, siromaštvo itd., kao primarni pokretači kriminala kako u razvijenim tako i u zemljama u razvoju. Čak i tijekom razdoblja gospodarskih kriza, stopa kriminala u Europskoj uniji (EU) nastavila je opadati ili ostaje ista, dovodeći u pitanje utjecaj ekonomskih čimbenika na stopu kriminala u EU. U radu se ispituje utjecaj promjenjivih gospodarskih uvjeta na stopu kriminala u zemljama EU-a uz primjenu danas široko korištenih ekonomskih metoda za rješavanje problema endogenosti. Cilj je rada empirijski procijeniti odnos između stope kriminala i ekonomskih čimbenika, koristeći prethodno razvijene metode. Nakon niza provjera robusnosti, procjene nisu pružile dokaz značajne povezanosti između ekonomskih uvjeta i stope kriminala tijekom posljednjeg desetljeća u zemljama EU-a, osim ubojstava u nekim specifikacijama modela.